E 487 
i 






.L6 B2 




i Copy 1 




THE PURCHASE BY RLOOD: 






% &x'xhnU 






TO 






BRIG-GEN. CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL, Jr. 






SPOKEN IN THE WEST CHURCH, 






Oct. 30, 1864. 






By C. A. BARTOL. 






BOSTON: 






PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON. 






1864. 



THE PURCHASE BY BLOOD 



% Hxxhxxtt 



BRIG.-GEN. CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL, Jr. 



SPOKEN IN THE WEST CHURCH, 



Oct. 30, 1804. 





By C: A. BARTOL. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
1864. 



.1 

.Li GB^. 



Sunday, Oct. 30, 1864. 
Rev. Dr. Bartol. 

Dear Sir, — The undersigned, members of the Standing Committee 

of the West-Boston Society, would respectfully request of you a copy of 

the Sermon delivered by you to-day, commemorative of the late General 

Lowell, for the purpose of publishing the same. 



Truly your friends, 



Alex. Wadswortii. 
e. lombardy. 
F. U. Tracy. 
Thomas Gaffiei.d. 
A. E. Johonnot. 
Francis E. Faxon 
H. H. Coolidgk. 



T It I B U T E. 



Psalm lxxii. 14: "Precious shall their blood be in his sight." 

That is to say, the blood has in it a certain price or 
power to purchase. -Any thing in the world is worth 
what you can buy with it ; and blood is incomparable 
treasure, by this rule. So I claim to-day the blood 
nowhere more copious or pure than has marked your 
lintels and these church-doors. It were impertinent 
for us to live on, and not recognize its rate. It is a 
universal law. Blood, shed in testimony to any truth 
or principle, is the chief riches of mankind. It is" 
not money, or what we commonly mean by value, — 
< a commodity named in books of political economy, 

like coin or coupon, exchange or merchandise, har- 
vest, work of art, piece of mechanical labor or skill ; 
yet the wealth of it, as demonstrated in what it 
obtains and is bartered for, mounts beyond bullion 
or bank-bill, any growth of the field, monument of 
skill, best note of hand, or royal promise to pay. 

There are times when nothing else will pass ; but 
on this alone as a specie basis all beside depends. 



It is so with us now. By revenue and tax, by mining 
and tillage, we hope to cancel our liabilities. But 
these were worthless, and all the property any miser 
hugs lost, or the plunderer's prey, without this better 
and primary opulence of consecrated and self-sacri- 
ficing blood. Let us consider how far this sort of 
riches goes, or what it will buy in that market which 
has other treasures than of food and clothing, office 
or ornament, exposed for sale by the universal owner 
and lord of the creation. 

First, while it appears to be the losing, it is really 
the saving and purchase, of our life. Men in peril, 
astray in deserts, or drowning in wrecks, offer all they 
have for their life. Is it extravagant to say, that 
this nation, staggering under blows of assassination, 
plunged and struggling in the whirlpool of secession, 
is buying existence with the blood of its sons \ The 
chief priests bought the potters-field with Judas's 
cast-away silver, saying, "It is the price of blood," — a 
disgrace, good for nothing else ; but what was the 
blood itself, bought with thirty pieces, — the Hebrew 
sum for a slave, — but the price of the salvation of 
mankind ! We are to-day buying our laws and liber- 
ties, else sold at auction to the highest and basest 
tyrant bidder, with this same currency of blood. No- 
thing else will be taken. As debtors are sometimes 
told, "We do not want your paper ; though first-class, 
it is not a legal tender for the case in hand: we 
demand gold ; " so blood is required of us. Many 
mourn over the expense to which we are put. They 



are inclined to say of our enterprise, " It costs more 
than it comes to ; " and ready to give up the contest. 
Years ago, we were advised, " Your zeal is fine ; but, 
when the dead and wounded begin to come home, 
and the crippled to limp, or get with crutches round 
the streets, the feeling will change." The dead and 
disabled by thousands have come home. But the 
feeling has not changed, and cannot change, so long 
as an instinct informs the people that their very heart 
is aimed at, or until the nation can consent to die 
rather than atone for the sins which can have no 
remission without the shedding of blood. It is the 
blood of our best. But better eat seed-corn than 
starve ! Better be half-slain in self-defence than slain 
altogether and outright. Besides, in our progress, so 
manifest, though by such slow degrees, towards re- 
demption, how fairly the Almighty Dealer we have to 
do with shows that he reckons every instalment on 
obligations of the past we have to pay ! If he holds 
out his hand for more of this ruddy liquidation, our 
creditor is kind, as he is just ; for the advantages that 
accrue in his providence outweigh all our waste and 
loss. It chills and inflames me to hear it atheistically 
spoken of as sheer waste and loss by men who do not 
seem to imagine we have any account open with God ; 
and are so deaf to the voice of human annals, and so 
void of faith in human nature, as to think that from 
patriotic battle for order and right nothing of lasting 
import inures. 

Will you talk of the loss of means, the monstrous 



6 



swelling debtJ But you do not ask yonder merely 
what a merchant owes, but what his assets are. The 
question is, not of our debt in dollars and cents, the 
depletion of purse or population, but with what estate 
of soul and body we can pay the draft. The blood 
of courageous devotion shall buy off all the dead 
corses and millions of gold. Coin it into drachmas, 
and how much will it make \ Solve the sum in your 
financial arithmetic, and tell in figures what one 
drop of it is worth. It is going to afford us a new 
lease of life, as a community. For that, let us lavish 
it as individuals, holding the Roman maxims, To see 
that the republic receive no harm, and To despair 
of the republic is a crime. It is no rhetorical touch 
on your sensibility, but authentic statement, that the 
returns already are immense in our very being. No 
race was ever bankrupt, in which the blood of free- 
dom and honor flowed, and which was willing to let 
it flow out in part to save the honor and freedom of 
the whole. 

What do we contract for with this blood % I said, 
for our life ; I add, for our Union : and how much is 
that worth \ Some years ago, one or another party — 
opposite ones — undertook to calculate the value 
of it ; but their ciphering was laughed to scorn. 
Yet the Union, which can stand only in order and 
impartial freedom, w r as almost gone. Like men that 
get up something sunk out of sight in the sea, we, 
with our lines of battle, are drawing it back from 
the roaring gulf of anarchy. Let us not grudge the 



cost ! Through all time, men have paid great prices 
for surrender of person or territory from bondage. 
Our turn has come to offer in blood terms of ransom 
from captivity. Northern blood and Southern blood 
are put into the same measure of the Most High, with 
whom we are in treaty, whether, despite our corrup- 
tion, we deserve to continue longer on the earth. 
Both are " blood of the covenant " with which our re- 
union is sealed. Not an unregarded particle of it, 
secretly away from human eyes soaking into the 
ground, shall escape his notice and exact allowance. 
The vessel he holds for it is a graduated cup, and we 
shall be released the moment the just mark in it is 
reached. The rising of the tide by a hair's breadth 
at last floats the mightiest frigate ; and we need not 
fear infinite equity will throw away aught of the cir- 
culation, whose ebb from our bosoms makes the 
flood, in its sight, to move that ship, aground, which 
we call the vessel of state. We are bought with a 
price. Our debt is funded in this capital of noble 
blood. We cannot repudiate the debt, because we 
cannot repudiate the blood ! 

How, do you ask, shall our outlay be made good? 
I know not that I can tell. The processes of life in 
a man cannot be traced to the bottom, nor the manner 
in which nations rise by that fall of their sons which 
is their own ascension too. But the fact is undoubta- 
ble. This nation has already so risen, as from nothing, 
once. It fought and strove its way at first to birth 
mong the powers and governments of the globe. 



In its infancy did it find itself in the attempt to extin- 
guish it. It came to consciousness when assailed and 
borne down by arbitrary power. From the swoon of 
oppression it awoke by being bled. It lay like a child 
close to Bunker Hill, and many a spot beside of sac- 
rifice ; and it was nursed wonderfully from the vital 
expenditure, every stain of which had disappeared. 
But Bunker Hill itself almost sinks before the grand- 
eur of present struggles for designs of transcendent 
consequence. The civilization of the world is always 
fed from scenes of human renunciation and pain, as 
its devotion has been sustained from Gethsemane and 
Calvary. It is a mystery, but it is the truth. God 
knows why this American community, long sick with 
its own transgressions, fainting under the strokes 
of internal foes, gets the new nurture it cannot do 
without only from the red baptism of this Aceldama. 
He knows why blood so much is the price and pur- 
chase of that sanctity which alone can insure our 
longevity. 

When we think of the victims of the war, the lambs 
without number taken out of our vast flock and fold 
for a vicarious sacrifice, we lament. But when we 
think of the temper in which they have gone to it, 
and the contagion of virtue to scatter our corruption 
they spread, what is grand and immortal in us exults 
over the bier, though holding our own. See the 
young man in the flower of his days, surrounded by 
all that can stir or fill earthly desire ! He has kin- 
dred dear to him as his own soul, and is the blossom 



!) 



on a generous stock. A fine position he holds for 
reputation, influence, and gain. He is conscious of 
abilities to ascend in any calling of peaceful life to 
the topmost rank of his fellow-men. He loves, and is 
loved : the sweetest mixture ever commended to mor- 
tal taste touches his lips. His abounding strength 
lifts the horoscope of score on score of years of enjoy- 
ment, equal to what our humanity can ever have in 
its lot. But he surrenders it all ; he lays it on his 
country's shrine ; he carries it into the path of the 
bullet, and puts it at the hazard of any ruffian's aim. 
Wherefore is it? Because, though he has all heart 
could desire for himself and the house he was born in, 
it is not enough, if the house of the nation is broken 
into ; because he owns his parentage in the common 
Father, and the mother-land that bore him, and be- 
cause they, through whom he came, see the child- 
hood of God and duty beyond that to themselves in 
their son ; because, if wedded, he knows he was hon- 
or's husband before, and because the wife girds and 
gives him to that supreme prior choice, and by her 
delicate but resolute fingers the badges of his fatal 
vocation are wrought ; because he feels he belongs to 
this awful fortune, as part of the price of redemption 
for justice and native land ; and that part of the price 
which he is he will not, like the perjured promisers 
in Scripture, keep back. He confesses he is not his 
own ; there was a hold of pre-emption on him before 
he could dispose of himself any way : a heavy mort- 
gage, covering all he is worth, includes body and soul. 



10 



He waits not, therefore, for the conscription, or asser- 
tion of its right by the law. He volunteers, — and 
'tis this volunteering has saved us ! — not pretending 
he is making any gift, or has independent property in 
his own endowment or nature to bestow. Truly we 
say he is p> ossesse d with a divine impulse for a provi- 
dential end. Nor does he believe that life or death 
hangs for him on the dice of chance, but the bidding of 
God. He understands well there is no want of econ- 
omy in adventuring what he has or hopes into utter 
jeopardy. Be it what it may, intellect, manhood, love, 
or holy purpose, he is sure it shall all be counted for 
the attaining of his purpose by his Maker and man- 
kind. In that certainty he is satisfied ; and, calm as 
you under your roof, he walks in all the fury of the 
strife. 

Such is the blood we may call precious, because it 
is the frice with which things invaluable and indis- 
pensable are procured. We hear of those, beset by 
enemies or encountering robbers, resolved to sell their 
lives as dear as possible. Our princely boys, our 
lovely Jonathans, without thought of personal escape 
or self-protection, have sold their lives as dearly as 
possible for the general safety. Let us not deplore 
them ! Let us envy them the way of their death ! 
We shall probably die — comparatively mean privi- 
lege ! — in our beds, of some disease that flesh is heir 
to. Their flesh is consumed on the altar. They have 
taken off" its robe suddenly, at the bridegroom's com- 
ing, to put on the wedding garment. It has dropped 



11 



from them in the blaze of battle, like Elijah's in the 
chariot of fire. They leave it behind, a mute and 
mangled but resistless testimony of their cause. The 
bounding blood of the hero is noble. More noble the 
refluent blood of the martyr. When both mingle in 
one man, how fast they fill up the price of the com- 
monwealth ! 

Shall we question the price of blood, when we re- 
flect how much that purchase means 1 What equiv- 
alent do we foresee, but posterity, nourished on what it 
procures ; industry, in the next generation, instead of 
the blight of luxury and mildew of self-indulgence in 
our youth ; freedom, a pioneer sturdy as. ever smote 
the woods of the Western wilderness, advancing to 
redeem the soil, so long by our wretched serfdom 
defrauded of its fertility ; immigration, hardly intimi- 
dated by the shock of arms, coursing more abundantly 
in the channels of peace; literature, already springing 
to bud and bloom, for splendid and native flourishing, 
out of furrows ploughed into the sub-soil of character 
by the cannon- wheel ; art, with subjects many and 
large as she can wish to treat furnished to her hand ; 
eloquence and song, dropping artifice to become the 
voice of nature ; out of ignorance and barbarism in 
our borders, education starting for the reconstruction 
of which politicians debate ; religion, reviving out of 
a sorrow so impartial and wide-spread as to cement 
all sects into Christian unity ; a grander statesman- 
ship, begotten of a sincerer faith ; our political edifice 
restored, like finer buildings on the spot of a confla- 



12 

gration : and all this purchased with the blood whose 
effusion our streaming eyes and bleeding hearts — as 
nature in us contends with spirit — accompany and 
bewail X Thanks to those, at home or abroad, who 
favor such a consummation ! 

One has lately fallen in battle of whose renown 
we claim a share for the church wherein he had 
his birth, in whose Sunday school he was taught, 
and of whose almost peerless pastor, he, after his 
own father, was namesake. Colonel Charles Russell 
Lowell, Jr., commissioned Brigadier-General before 
he expired, was born in Boston, January 2, 1835, and 
was mortally wounded, October 19, dying the next 
day, in the thirtieth year of his age. He had of 
talent a heritage fourfold, and was of a lineage, on 
either side, distinguished in the foremost places of 
business, inventive enterprise, and every useful pro- 
fession, or gracing domestic retirement with the softer 
glories of womanly accomplishment. In his own 
achievements he but continued the line of ancient 
fame, — his great-grandfather Lowell having, from 
a righteous and instinctive foresight, so worded the 
Preamble to our Bill of Rights as to make slavery for 
ever void in Massachusetts. To the fourth genera- 
tion, he maintained the spirit of his progenitors ; and 
his opposition to this Rebellion was not will so much 
as obedience to an original law of his own nature. 
Ijut his military ability was one form only of his over- 
flowing power. He had devoted himself to mechani- 



13 



cal improvement, both from an innate tendency, and 
a wish to better the condition of the workmen. It 
shows his quality, that, after being the first scholar in 
the Latin School, and graduating at Cambridge with 
the highest honors, he entered the factory-works at the 
bottom, — doing the stints of the youngest boy, clear- 
ing old iron chains, and bringing water. Philan- 
thropically exercising his finer gifts at Chicopee, he 
had regular classes of the younger laborers, to whom 
he gave scientific lectures. He could have been a 
merchant, but that he disliked bargaining. It became 
early evident, as it was manifest in all his course, that 
his genius, limited to no calling, verily like the mecha- 
nician's universal joint, could turn any and every 
way, though his signal force and rapid rise in rank in 
the army would imply, to such as knew him slightly, 
that he was made only for a soldier. But a soldier of 
the first order he became. Hearing, at the Mount- 
Savage Iron- Works in Maryland, which he superin- 
tended, of the attack by the mob on the Massachu- 
setts Sixth, April 19, 1861, he could not bear it, but 
hastened at once to Baltimore, without any knowledge 
or consultation of friends. He stopped there the 
fearful Sunday that followed, and made his way, we 
knew not how, on foot or otherwise, as he could, 
through raging dangers, with his carpet-bag, to Wash- 
ington : offered his services ; was accepted, and at 
once commenced to labor, — first as an agent in the 
charge of military stores ; though, as soon as the 
opportunity came, he entered on the more hazardous 



14 



career he preferred, and in which he persevered, say- 
ing, " As Southern gentlemen enlist, so should the 
Northern." He modestly, at first, asked to be lieu- 
tenant ; but the military authorities, declaring he 
deserved higher rank, offered him a captaincy. He 
never put himself forward, but was inevitably ad- 
vanced by his wonderful, and almost unparalleled, 
energy. Reticent about whatever he compassed, 
incapable of boasting, he could not even bear to be 
praised. He kept steadily in camp, hardly ever seen 
by his parents, always at his post, doing his duty. 
So with equal success it would have been anywhere, 
and in any sphere. Such was his promptness and 
infallible execution, that, if his superior wanted to 
have any thing done quickly and surely, it became 
a byword in the army, that Lowell was to be sum- 
moned, — the man to lead a forlorn hope. His quell- 
ing, like Cromwell, of a mutiny in Boston, that began 
in his absence, as in his presence it hardly could, kill- 
ing the ring-leader, who was on the point of killing a 
subordinate officer ; his abashing into instant submis- 
sion of a rebel, who had raised a pistol against him, 
with a " Down with that ! " and down it went ; his 
cutting down another who had stretched out his hand 
to seize the color, — all show the impassioned resolu- 
tion, deliberate will, wise daring, and cool fire of a 
heart and brain that went always together, although 
an exceeding tenderness equalled and ennobled his 
habit of command. Whatever he was sent for, as by 
a kind of fate, came to pass. He was never late, 



15 



never wrong, never circumvented ; but his efficiency 
became a proverb to those above him or below ; so 
that the brave Sheridan, who, in recent disaster, by a 
miracle of real presence, retrieved the fortunes of the 
day, — the most brilliant feat yet in our land-ser- 
vice, — when he heard of the death of one of temper 
so kindred with his own, might well exclaim, " Good 
God ! Lowell gone ? Many of us might have been 
better spared." In a self-exposure, never thoughtless 
or foolhardy, but on purpose, and ever to the pomt, 
twelve horses had been shot under him, a shell had 
passed through the blanket at his saddle, his cloth- 
ing been riddled all over with shot, and he had 
gone through a thousand marvellous escapes, before 
he rode the thirteenth horse, which was repeatedly 
wounded in the last charge, — while he, untouched 
by any deadly missile, seemed to bear a charmed 
life. 

A little after noon, on the 19th, a spent minnie- 
ball passed through the sleeve of his coat, and 
struck the breast at the upper part, without breaking 
the skin, burying itself as it could, cased by his un- 
der-vest, in the flesh. It collapsed the lungs, and 
took away his breath, with a dint that would have 
been mortal at last ; but he, quietly like himself, put 
in his fingers, took it out, threw it away, and refused 
to retire, though he was soon helpless, for two hours, 
from the blow, which would have discouraged most 
men. He said, " It is only my poor lung : I cannot 
leave the field ; I have not lost a drop of blood yet." 



16 



His poor lung was weakened by occasion of severe 
disease and hemorrhage some years before. At about 
half-past three, a second minie-bullet crashed through 
his right shoulder, severing the spinal column on its 
spiteful way, and stopping just at the surface of the 
shoulder on the other side. Even his bravery could 
not pretend to be able to stay and fight longer. He 
sank, incompetent for the action that had been his 
congenial element from his birth to that moment. His 
battles were over ; but not, in his judgment, his offi- 
cial duties. In the shelter to which he was borne he 
issued his orders, giving directions so precise, when his 
voice allowed, all through the night of the 19th, that 
those under him, who so sadly missed their leader, 
might not miss his leadership after he was gone, — 
ducal soul, alive or breathing his last, as he was ! 
He wished by these instructions to settle, through his 
staff, all business connected with his command. Not 
the minutest thing, says his highly valued and warm- 
ly attached aide, Lieutenant Alvord, was forgotten. 
He would save his staff trouble, and prevent any mis- 
take or error after his decease. These particulars 
were taken down in writing at the time, he speaking 
and resting at intervals, knowing death was near, and 
might hinder him, and so concentrating his thoughts 
into the fewest words, as the surgeon advised the least 
possible speech. Because of his wounds, he was able 
himself to write but two short lines to his wife, who 
had been to him, in their short earthly companion- 
ship, helpmeet indeed. All the rest was by dictation. 



17 



How he taught the lesson of despatch, and of com- 
posure as well ! 

God granted him to depart in victory over the foe, 
and greater victory over death, on a date made trebly 
memorable by the battle of Yorktown, the surrender 
of Burgoyne, and triumph of Cedar Creek. It was 
beautiful that the faculties, which had been so sun- 
like and lucid for his work, should remain clear, with- 
out a cloud to the last. It was merciful that the 
body, which had been so pitted against peril and 
mortal pain, should be let down through the degrees 
of exhaustion, and become lifeless without a pang. 
Had he survived, I know not what eminence of career 
awaited such harmonious composition and matchless 
combination of head and heart and hand. A friend 
of his, in high command, writes, " Lowell has made a 
great reputation, and is booked for a star ; he is con- 
sidered the best fighting man for a brigade here." 
But, like our chief on the field, he was taciturn about 
his own doings. He hated writing ; he almost hated 
speech. He was not one to use either to profess 
his feelings : hardly would he to express them. Sen- 
timental talk was never to his taste. I remember, in 
the camp near Washington, his bending his sword, to 
show me, in the language of action, what poor stuff 
it was made of. 

" Stood for itself his deed." 

So it was to the last. He confined himself to the 
essential. He cared for those whom he had led, sent 
brief good-by, and commended to God the soul that 



18 



doubtless hovered over his earthly home on its way to 
heaven. What opened before him here below looked 
so great as to make his decease seem untimely ; but 
what he performed was so perfect, his task appears 
finished, without defect or fault. 

I saw him several times within the last year ; once, 
to congratulate him on the fidelity with which he had 
taken a mutinous life, when he would rather have 
given his own ; to my approval, a silent glow of grate- 
ful pleasure hi his ingenuous face being the only 
reply, while I stood admiring, meanwhile, the strange 
refinement into which meditation and experience had 
carried the child's full rosy cheeks, in which from the 
outset lurked such manly beauty, like the statue hid 
in the block. On the morning of the 20th of this Oc- 
tober, at eight o'clock, his spirit flew ; for it did not 
take that spirit long to get out of the body ! Was it 
not to the embrace of other spirits that it flew, espe- 
cially of three, — the own brother, James Jackson 
Lowell ; the dear coushi, William Lowell Putnam ; 
and his other brother, Colonel Eobert Shaw, buried 
with his colored soldier-boys at Fort Wagner, who had 
preceded him out of the same deadly lists into what 
some poet calls " the silent land," though it is vocal 
enough within itself: and how musical with joy, when 
parted friends, in mutual recognition, meet and greet 
again ! But, while they proceed, undying, above, 
" precious " on earth in what it purchases for us " is 
their blood in His sight." Parents, doubly honored, 
we style you not afflicted, but blessed, who have made 



19 



such a contribution to the common weal ! Can we 
forget your parents, in their partly posthumous gifts 
to the cause of all that is sacred among men, of the 
three grandchildren who have ascended to their wel- 
come benediction of salute \ Shall we fail to remem- 
ber that the blood, our blood, in these or other veins, 
still circulating or flowing to the ground, is, of all we 
want in our utmost need, the saving price 1 

But listen a little longer for me to say it is the price, 
not only of liberty and law, and our name to be a 
people on this planet, but the purchase, too, of our faith 
in the everlasting state. Such dying as it is our privi- 
lege to live in an age to behold, is it not the prophecy 
of interminable life ? Nay, it is the display of a life 
of intrinsic imperishableness, to which we can set 
no bound. It compels infidelity to belief. Doubter of 
human immortality, I call up my witnesses to put 
your scepticism to shame ! I summon those youthful 
forms from then* slumber in the ground into the vis- 
ionary court of our mind to testify. Rather, I bid you 
hearken to the whisper of their living spirits, glorified, 
yet shining with the former look and expression ex- 
alted. I cite the action and example of our brother, 
last vanishing, for demonstration of a continued being. 
Has the lamp gone out of that intelligence of his, so 
eager to communicate itself, that the troops could not 
halt but he would have his officers at headquarters for 
lessons] for, from a book of which there was but 
one copy, — " Thiers's History of the Consulate and 
Empire," — he read aloud to his staff, teaching them, 



20 



not from the volume itself, but giving his own views 
from some passage as a text. Has that courage been 
cowed to the phantom of death, which bore him, 
with a constant three-years' bid for the bullet, along 
the blazing edge in the Peninsula or the Shenandoah 
Valley, where no horse could be safe with him, though 
Providence spared his life till he had completed his 
mission'? Shall the sublime trust of such an offered 
head not be justified'? Had that leaden messenger, 
which I saw hi his father's hand, bruised and scooped 
in crushing along his bones, the privilege to let into 
nonentity the soul it could not daunt 1 Is premature 
and irreparable extinction the burden of our dirge 
and funeral-march over his dust % Could the traitor- 
ous muzzle, raised, not only against him, but against 
all that makes life desirable on this continent, be per- 
mitted to blast to annihilation the will and principle 
that withstood inhumanity % Believers in God, fol- 
lowers of Christ, friends of man, not so with him, or 
those in the same cause going after or gone before 
him! Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, part- 
ners and lovers, here present or far away, into and 
out of whose veins the same rich ancestral stream of 
blood has flowed, in life and in death, think not that 
any of it, — a particle, — is lost in the sands of distant 
battle-fields, " like water spilt on the ground, that 
cannot be gathered up." It is not only the price of 
our political duration, and the security of our civil 
honesty, that had begun so to quake among the na- 
tions, but proof that the spark of reason and love 






it was animated by, through all cold obstruction of 
the clod, flames on in shape more fit to convey its 
own lustre. Ye to whom it was dear, and whose 
own it was, contemplate its essence eliminated and 
translated! Survey the offspring of your several 
family branches, so connected by nature and affection 
on earth, now in the communion of eternal progress 
and bliss, not only "in death not divided," but in 
living society of rapture we cannot conceive. So let 
us regard our brother ! The Second Massachusetts 
cavalry was not the last or best company he shall 
lead in the land of peace. Cedar Creek was not the 
final spot of his experience. Sublime dying per- 
suades of eternal living. While the spiritual like- 
ness abides a photograph in men's minds, the reality 
shall not cease. 

I have spoken of the price of blood, — what it will 
and does buy in the sight of God. But he asks, and 
mother-land asks, yet more. Have we it to give? 
Yes ; though sixty-five of our number have gone to 
various departments of the war already. Every re- 
ligious body, every Christian church, like our own, 
will answer, Yes ; more blood, if more for our great 
purchase be required ! Yes ; for this blood, running 
in us or running out from us, what is it good for 
but to vindicate God's righteousness in his children's 
weal? 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 192 892 9 « 






